June 1, 2021
Day 20 - Sebree, KY to Cave in rock, IL
Chicken shit
Woke up today to the sun coming in through the window. Ever since we crossed the time zone it comes up before 6. We made oatmeal and the coffee we got from the Mexican place. We left around 845. The sky was overcast and it seemed we were deep in farm land when all the sudden I saw a giant backhoe scooping soil out of an aircraft hanger. It turns out that it was a CAFO and they were scooping out all the dirt layer after raising thousands of chickens. They were running all the exhaust fans that pointed into the road at the end of the building. We didn't know this at the time but ran right into a horrible smog of dead chicken diseased poop soil dust. To make it worse they were trucking out that nasty soil to a landfill and the trucks kept passing us during the day. We would have to stop and cover our mouths for several minutes. We arrived in Dixon and decided that was the place to take our 1000 mile photo. A local made fun of us for taking a photo in front of Dixon city hall, but he had no idea why we were doing it.
The forecast for the day was predicting rain starting around noon and this was true. It started off weak but eventually became stronger. We stopped at an Amish food place only a few miles from the Illinois border to get dinner material but it turned out to be a scratch and dent food place that sold expired items. We bought a ton of cheap stuff and spaghetti to make for dinner. Our plan was to cross the river and get a cabin at cave in rock. We crossed on the ferry and rode the giant hill up to the state park.
We assumed we could get a good deal on a cabin since they lined all the roads with painted bicycles, but they had no bicyclist rate and the cabins were $140/night for the cheapest option! They didn't even have a kitchen. We had no way to cook spaghetti since we needed a big pot so we had to eat at the restaurant. It turned out to suck really bad. We ordered a veggie pizza with no cheese, but came to find out that each topping was a dollar and had an extremely mediocre $20 pizza. On top of all this, the guy tells us our cabin probably won't have wifi because it doesn't reach to ours. I think we all felt a bit cheated bit since all our stuff was soaked, we had no choice but to stay inside so some of our stuff could dry. Tomorrow is forecasted to be an even worse rain day but we all really want to make it to Carbondale. It will be our first big city since Blacksburg and has an outdoor store and bike shop. We will have to see how tomorrow goes and decide how far we can pedal in the rain. So far we have no plan but we can't afford to stay here. At least the view is good...
Mileage:58
Altitude gain:3400
Today's ride: 58 miles (93 km)
Total: 1,059 miles (1,704 km)
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